The Hypocrisy of Israeli Oppression : Cast Lead Revisited?

The Israeli onslaught on the people of Gaza is following an analogous trajectory as that before the full scale massacre of Operation Cast Lead. Perhaps spurred tactically by Goldstone’s unfortunate recent statements, Israel deliberately instigated and fuelled the new attack on the defenceless people in Gaza who subsist in the largest open air prison in the world, under brutal military occupation for 44 years and now besieged for nearly 1,400 days. 52% of Gaza’s population are children. Perhaps Gaza should disguise itself as a yellow bus.

After the Izzin Al Qassam brigade fired an anti-tank missile into a school bus, claiming they thought it was a military vehicle, Israel had its chance to justify its previous violence and provocations as well as to play into its tactical victimhood posture, already primed by blaming Palestinians for the Itamar murders and Jerusalem bus bomb despite no culprits having been found. Hamas has offered cease fires twice, and both offers have been contemptuously rejected by Israel. Israel, as with Operation Cast Lead, seeks a macabre ‘blood quota’ from the defenceless citizens of Gaza, over whom the Israeli Public Security Minister has declared an official state policy of collective punishment – there is “no immunity for anyone in Gaza.”

Despite Israel having conducted continuous previous provocations, it has utilised the bus incident, raining a deluge of strikes on Gaza which have killed at this point nearly 20 people:

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, issued a sharp warning to Hamas and other groups. “The attack on the children’s bus was crossing a red line. Heaven help those who try to hurt and murder children,” he said.

Yet Israel has been killing Palestinian children with impunity for 63 years.

Like most privileged groups, Israeli zionists consistently feel it is others, Palestinians, who should change and that violence, including acts prohibited by international law, is a legitimate tool to force the required change. Then the zionist elite expect Israel to be ‘liked’ and respected by those whom they cast as lesser beings and repress brutally. However, oppressed Palestinians don’t necessarily dislike anyone on an individual basis. The oppressed people would just like the oppression and violation of their rights to end. Israel on the other hand, pursues policies of collective punishment and a strategy of expansionism and belligerence. The Palestine Papers reveal how Israel consistently stretches out and sabotages the fake ‘peace process’ with impossible offers and intransigence, while illegal ziocolonists nibble away at the West Bank and East Jerusalem with impunity and encouragement, tacit and overt, from the Israeli regime, further entrenching existing apartheid.

Occupied people have the right, affirmed in the 4th Geneva Conventions, to resist their Occupiers. Recognising that no other methods have led to liberation, Palestinian people called in 2005 for non-violent boycotts, divestments and sanctions in order to obtain their just human and political rights Please help rightsless Palestinians end the occupation and attain the rights most of us take for granted in our own lands by answering their call. Only when oppression and injustice to the indigenous Palestinian people has ended will the violence also stop.

Palestinian resistance declared cease-fire that starts at 11 pm Gaza time but it was one-sided, Israel didn’t oblige instead they responded by continuous shelling and air raids.

They re-raided the border line between Gaza and Egypt. Egyptian local news sources reported that a shell fell on a land inside Egyptian Rafah but with no reported injuries.

All dead and injured in Gaza were civilians.

Huge power outages took place in Khan Younis and Rafah after Israel’s heavy shelling on Gaza, many power lines and converters were damaged.

Explosions, sporadic fire and Israeli warplanes were heard till 3 am of April the 8th.

It looks like the upcoming days will bring more assaults and attacks.

So to be continued….

Teen critically injured in attack on Negev bus
Two hurt in missile strike on bus carrying students near Gaza

Following the attack, the Israel Defense Forces quickly retaliated and launched both land and air strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, the IDF spokesperson said, killing a 50-year-old man and wounding five others.

Defense Minister, Ehud Barak ordered the army to respond quickly and said he held the Hamas militant group, which rules Gaza, responsible for the violence. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack.

The strike came following several weeks of tension and mutual attacks along Israel’s border with the Hamas-ruled Strip, with Israel Defense Forces aircraft striking smuggling tunnels in southern Gaza earlier Thursday.

On Tuesday, IDF tanks fired at and killed an armed Palestinian approaching the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel on Tuesday, as three mortar bombs exploded in Israeli soil.

The incident took place after an IDF force spotted an armed Palestinian near the Erez crossing at the Strip’s north, later directing tank fire to the spot. No injuries were reported from among the soldiers.

On Saturday, IDF planes struck a vehicle travelling at the south of the Gaza Strip, killing three Hamas operatives, one of them a top commander in Hamas’ military wing.

An IDF Spokesperson stated that the three men were members of a terrorist cell that was “planning to kidnap Israelis over the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover” in Israel and in the Sinai Peninsula, a popular spring tourist destination for Israelis.

The Palestinian Ma’an news agency identified the three as Isma’il Labad and his brother Abdullah from Ash-Shati’ refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, and military commander Muhammad Ad-Dayah from the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City.

Ad-Dayah, 33, is considered to be a top Hamas military official. As a child he participated in the first intifada, later serving as the bodyguard of former Hamas chief Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Ad-Dayah also lost one of his eyes during an attempted mortar attack on a nearby settlement.

Hamas vowed vengeance against Israel in a statement Saturday, describing the strike as a crime and “serious escalation” of the recent violence, and vowed that Israel would “bear all the consequences.” The militant group also called on the U.S. to stop the flow of financial aid to Israel.

Prior to the attack, Palestinian militants have fired rocket salvos into Israel, reaching as far as the major southern city Be’er Sheva, and Israel has carried out a series of air strikes.

RT @avinunu: Mahmoud, aged 10, was murdered by Israel on Mar 22, earlier in its deliberate escalation of Gaza violence http://is.gd/6PrIsb
Violence erupts across Gaza border

The fire from Gaza on Thursday began a few hours after Israel’s air force bombed sites which it said were smuggling tunnels in the northern Gaza Strip, said Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot. Palestinian sources reported that four people were injured in those stikes.

Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency said three of the overnight air strikes hit the southern Gaza Strip – one in the Yebna refugee camp, a second in the Barazili neighbourhood and a third hit tunnels near the Salah Ad-Din district. The fourth hit an area east of Gaza City, said Ma’an.

@Omar_Gaza: Breaking: New martyr in Gaza khaled Al Dibari 23 4m Rafah #Gaza, total= 4 dead 30+ injured. #

Barghouti: Israel trying to thwart reconciliation
Israeli attacks on Gaza kill 5, injure 30

“Many of those wounded [have] moderate to light [injuries]. More than ten of the wounded are children. In the southern city of Rafah, Israeli shelling hit a mosque and caused the injury of 14 persons, including women and children. Israeli shells also hit an ambulance, wounding two crew members,” Adham Abu Silimiya, spokesperson for the ambulance service in Gaza, told The Electronic Intifada.

Israeli air strikes struck residents’ homes in eastern Gaza, a government building in northern Gaza and underground tunnels in southern Gaza.
…
The Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in retaliation for Israel’s 1 April extrajudicial killing of three Hamas members in Gaza.

New York, 7 April 2011 – Statement attibutable to the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General on violence in Gaza and southern Israel
Netanyahu: Israel will take any action necessary in Gaza Strip

The U.S. State Department condemned the bus attack, and expressed concern about use of advanced anti-tank weapons against civilians.

“We condemn the attack on innocent civilians in southern Israel in the strongest possible terms, and on-going rocket fire from Gaza,” the statement read. “There is no justification for the targeting of innocent civilians and those responsible for these terrorist attacks should be held accountable.”

“We are deeply about concerned about reports that indicate the use of an advanced anti-tank weapon in an attack against civilians.”

Despite Ceasefire Declared by Palestinian Factions, Army Bombards More Areas In Gaza
@Palaestina: israeli terrorist forces continue to bombard Khuza3a in besieged #Gaza #Palestine #
@Palaestina: 2 martyrs in Khan Younsi and at least 3 wounded in continued israeli air raids on besieged #Gaza #Palestine #
Gaza gov’t files complaint to UN over strikes
BDS rooted in law and human rights
Rumors that Israel has fallen out of favor in the EU are exaggerated
Erekat condemns ‘systematic Israeli escalation’
Hamas says didn’t mean to target Israeli school bus

BREAKING NEWS: Israeli Embassy in Cairo Under Siege
Palestinian factions resume firing homemade shells into Israel, causing no injuries
Death toll rises in deadly Gaza strikes

Palestine / Israel Links

In Memoriam: Deir Yassin
Transient Is Sought in Blast at California Synagogue
Concern For the Future of Israel
Israeli wide demolitions in Aqaba village this morning
Interview with Norman Finkelstein: ‘Israel has bigger problems than me’
Goldstone Flinched For Reason So Many Progressive Jews Do: Social Pressure
Ladysmith Black Mambazo not performing in Israel
If anyone tells you the next war on #Gaza started because a rocket hit a bus in #Israel, show them this http://bit.ly/fqURgy
Libya and Gaza explained by Fanon and Sartre
Merkel: Unilateral recognition of Palestinian state may not push peace forward
Beating up on the Greens, Australian style
Mendes’ mendacious article in the Oz : Israel boycott harms Arabs, too
Palestinians utterly ignored by Murdoch press when talking Palestine

Latest WikiLeaks cables reveal Israel’s fears and alliances
Planned US lawsuit against Goldstone ‘still in early phase’

A group of American Jewish lawyers is preparing a civil lawsuit against Richard Goldstone for libel, but when and where it will be filed has yet to be determined.

The proposed class action lawsuit was initiated by Likud MK Danny Danon, as reported by The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. He discussed the idea in conversation with American attorneys during a recent visit to the United States. It would demand that Goldstone publicly apologize to the State of Israel and pay a symbolic amount of damages for the accusations he made in his UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict report.

Goldstone Flinched For Reason So Many Progressive Jews Do: Social Pressure
An amazing magic trick by Israel. Now you see it…now you don’t.

Hamas is no angel, they receive NO sympathy from me. But they appear to be much more efficient than Israel at not killing civilians using makeshift rockets and suicide bombings even though Israel is using state of the art U.S weaponry. Perhaps Israel should get some pointers from Hamas on how to avoid civilian deaths. And as far as I know Hamas hasn’t prevented freedom of movement or the oportunity to have a future for Israeli civilians. Funny how opinions can change. It’s like magic

God Retracts Key Biblical Pledge, Apologises for Harm Caused to Humankind
Spectacular New Ceasefire Pictures
Latest WikiLeaks cables reveal Israel’s fears and alliances

On 12 November 2009 the embassy reported the views of the general responsible for Gaza and southern Israel, Major General Yoav Galant, that Hamas needed to be “strong enough to enforce a ceasefire”.

He told the Americans: “Israel’s political leadership has not yet made the necessary policy choices among competing priorities: a short-term priority of wanting Hamas to be strong enough to enforce the de facto ceasefire and prevent the firing of rockets and mortars into Israel; a medium priority of preventing Hamas from consolidating its hold on Gaza; and a longer-term priority of avoiding a return of Israeli control of Gaza and full responsibility for the wellbeing of Gaza’s civilian population.”

Rudd: Greens won’t touch Israel policy

Rudd, who last month completed an exhaustive tour of the Middle East, including a visit to Israel, Jordan and two visits to Egypt, speculated the region’s future looked rocky.
He warned observers must keep watch on how some of the countries currently transitioning to democracy use that democracy.

“If a political movement uses a democratic process to obtain political power then extinguishes democracy once having obtained power and resorts to undemocratic means to exercise that power – that is what we must be mindful of across the Middle East,” he said.

He also noted Egyptian opinion polls had set Amr Moussa, a man who is not known as a friend to Israel, as frontrunner in the presidential elections.

Rudd, though, was guarded in his assessment of Moussa’s stance towards the ongoing presence of a Jewish State in the region.

“It is important that we work to understand what policies he would bring to bear in relation to Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the future of the Middle East peace process,” the Foreign Minister said.

Haaretz Wikileaks exclusive / Bahrain King boasted of intelligence ties with Israel

The king said he was pleased with the developments in the peace process.

He also revealed to the ambassador that he had instructed his public information minister to stop referring to Israeli in official statements of the kingdom as the “enemy” or the “Zionist entity.”

Monroe asked the Bahraini king whether he would agree to have trade relations with Israel. According to the telegram, the king thought it was too early and that the matter would have to wait until after a Palestinian state was established.

Wikileaks to publish Israeli cables soon, including Moghniyeh’s assassination
Shin Bet chief: Arab MKs flirting with enemy

According to the leaked documents, in one instance, Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin offered American counterparts, the organization’s stance on the sensitive subject of Israeli Arabs; many of whom “have taken their liberties too far.”

According to the leaked cables, Diskin said that some in the Israeli-Arab public see themselves as Arabs and Muslims first and Israeli citizens last. He also criticized the Arab MKs, saying they were “flirting with the enemy.”

The Shin Bet chief allegedly said that “(…) these people don’t spread Israel’s democratic values and principles, and abuse their diplomatic immunity.” He also attributed the problem to Palestinian refugees who return to Israel and “brought bad ideas” with them.

Haaretz WikiLeaks exclusive / Lieberman’s pick for PA president: Arafat’s economic adviser
Ireland PSC: Goldstone’s ‘reconsideration’ does not invalidate UN report on Israeli crimes in Gaza
US embassy cables: US discusses Gaza with Israeli security chief
The eugenicist racism of religious zionism: ‘Gentile sperm leads to barbaric offspring’
Forbidden Fruit: The Israeli Wine Industry and the Occupation
200 Trees Planted in Saffa Despite Military Harrasment
‘Israel pays no war compensation’
Hamas must pay dearly : Op-ed: Following attack on school bus, only way to restore lull in Gaza region is deterrence

This time, Israel intends to exact a very heavy price from Hamas, as the State of Israel and IDF have no solution that would fortify civilian transportation in the Gaza region. The only immediate solution is deterrence – and deterrence can only be achieved via plenty of fire.

This time, officials will not accept a Hamas request for a lull via secret channels of UN officials in the area, as happened in the past. In the coming days, the cannons, missiles, tanks, jets and rockets will do the talking, until the blood quota is filled.

Israel versus Judaism Since the existence of Zionism, one constant trend of thought has been the direction of Weizmann, Greenbaum, Sharett, Ben Gurion, Ehrenpreisz, Kastner, Stephen Wise, the councils in the ghettoes and the rescue committees of the free world: The only yearning was for the State. The people as a whole, or a segment thereof, were merely the means for the realization of a “homeland”. Whoever did not serve this purpose might as well have not been created.
Ziobots Invade Facebook
Palestinian factions resume firing homemade shells into Israel, causing no injuries

Libya Links

US Commander Sees Libya Stalemate
WikiLeaks: British officials toured Libyan chemical weapons lab months before Tony Blair visit
Libyan minister to take Turkish peace plan to Gaddafi
NATO Fears War without End in Libya
America’s coming ground war in Libya

Australia Links

Greens leader tells newspaper to ‘grow up’

The speculation in The Australian on this issue about some difference between myself and my fellow senators was false and misled its readers.”

Senior journalist for The Australian Matthew Franklin has hit back, complaining that the Greens had not replied to a number of questions sent to Senator Brown’s office.

“We had priorities and you didn’t figure,” Senator Brown responded.

Franklin asked Senator Brown: “With all respect, why is it when we put questions to your office you never answer them?”

But Senator Brown insists the Greens do answer the questions: “We answer them in written form so they won’t be misrepresented.

“We’ve got a great respect for the media in Australia, but The Australian doesn’t help keep that respect in order. The rest of the media does.”

In reply to another question from Franklin about the Greens’ attitude to Israel, Senator Brown referred to an Australian editorial which called for the “destruction” of the Greens.

“If The Australian wants to continue this vendetta in its aim of the destruction of the Greens editorially, then maybe it should look at the moral quality of the activities of its colleagues in News of the World in London,” Senator Brown said.

“I might ask News Limited if it can reassure readers that that sort of eavesdropping doesn’t occur and hasn’t occurred in Australia.”

As the feisty news conference drew to a close, Senator Brown challenged representatives of The Australian to a debate.

“Anytime, anyplace, anywhere. I’m very happy to take you on,” he said.

“Really, you should get over it. Grow up a bit. Get on to issues that Australians are interested in. You’re not doing yourselves much good.”

Franklin declined to take a call from ABC News Online.

Other Links

Torture and killing in Kenya – Britain’s double standards : The UK sees no contradiction in forcing Libyans to apologise for Lockerbie while denying Kenya’s Mau Mau victims recompense
Christina Patterson: What Hugh Grant revealed about the paparazzi and power

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